


A Weary Heaviness

by Electric_Apple



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Domestic, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-04
Updated: 2011-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-26 21:13:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Electric_Apple/pseuds/Electric_Apple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Helplessness does not sit easily or comfortably with Steve – not generally, and particularly not where his girl is concerned.  He picks up his phone half a dozen times to text Danny but makes himself put it down again before he can send the message, because he’s Sarah’s father, damnit, he can do this.  "</p><p>Sarah's sick.  Steve panics.  Danny soothes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Weary Heaviness

**Author's Note:**

> Chronologically, this story occurs just after _Spinning a Solid White Light_. Part of the Sarah-verse.

Steve’s cell phone rings just after lunch.

He contemplates not answering it – it’s one of those days, information from their current case flowing thick and fast with barely enough time to process it before all the parameters change again – but Leah’s number flashes across the screen and he excuses himself from the table with a wave of his hand, already swiping at the screen of the phone to take the call.

“Sarah’s sick,” Leah tells him without preamble. 

Steve remembers the dull red of his daughter’s cheeks when he kissed her goodbye that morning, the slightly glazed look in her eyes.  “How bad is it?”  It’s bad enough, obviously, if his babysitter is ringing him at work to tell him about it and Leah’s next words confirm it: fever, vomiting, can’t keep anything down.

He’s about to ask if Leah can handle it for another few hours, til he can at least get this latest round of information through to HPD, when Leah adds “She’s asking for you” and _shit_.

He pauses, completely unsure what to do.

Danny, however, has overheard enough of Steve’s end of the conversation to work out what’s going on and he gives Steve The Look, the one that suggests that if Steve is contemplating any course of action other than going straight home to his daughter, Danny is personally going to rip him a new one.

Braver men than Steve have cowered under that Look.

He scrubs a hand across his face.  “Yeah, okay.  I’ll leave here in twenty.” 

His team hurry him out the door in less than five.  “She’s your kid, boss,” Kono says – as though that it explains everything – and Chin and Danny nod because really, it does.  And they’re right, of course they’re right, but he can’t help feeling like he’s letting everyone down as he jogs downstairs to the car.  Danny’s car, he realises belatedly, someone will have to give him a lift round to Steve’s to collect it later.

Leah meets him at the door with Sarah in her arms.  The baby looks utterly miserable: her cheeks are now a flaming red against her otherwise pale face, her hair is damp with sweat, and her eyes are half-lidded.  She lifts her head when she says him, though – calls “Daddy” in a husky, tired voice.

He takes her from Leah and she’s startlingly hot to the touch; he settles her against him and she sighs heavily, pressing her face into the relative cool of his t-shirt.  “Not feeling so good, hey, Sammie?” he asks, kissing the top of her head.

Leah offers to stay but he sends her home, figuring that as long as he’s not at work, he can handle things at home.  And for about fifteen minutes, things go okay – with Sarah still clinging to him like a koala, he pours some juice into her sippy cup and sits down with her on the couch so she can drink it.

She flops in his lap and he has to hold the cup for her, but she does get about half of it down before her eyes flutter closed and she sags against him, asleep.

He waits a few minutes til he’s sure he’s out and is just about to stand to put her to bed when she coughs and sits up.  She coughs again, and again – and the juice comes up in a dull orange stream that somehow manages to soak Sarah, the front of Steve’s shirt and the arm of the couch.

By the time she’s finished, she’s a sobbing, hiccupping mess in his arms.  He rubs her back and sushes her soothingly but there’s no helping the fact that they’re both covered in vomit, so he has no choice but to wash her off and change her.  After, he sets her down in the middle of his bed while he changes his shirt; she cuddles into sheets gratefully.  She’s falling into a fretful sleep by the time he’s cleaned up so he lays down beside her.  Sarah immediately rolls over til she’s plastered against him.

They doze, together, for about twenty minutes.  Then Sarah sits up abruptly and heaves – and Steve can’t do anything but watch helplessly as she vomits again, this time painting the sheets along with herself and her father.  She’s crying by the time she’s finished.  “Yucky,” she moans, and he kisses her forehead and agrees.

Another round of changes, another interlude where Sarah clings to him and flatly refuses to let go long enough for him to strip the bed and change the sheets.  He’s worried about dehydration but there’s no point in trying to force any water into the baby: she’s still vomiting the dregs of the juice up an hour later (and seriously, it was _not_ that much damn juice to start with).

He texts Danny, one-handed, to say he won’t be back at work today.  Danny texts him back instantly: _Didn’t think you would be.  Take care of your girl._

Taking care of his girl – especially by himself – proves to be much harder than he thought it would be when he sent Leah home.  Sarah’s never really been sick before, aside from the odd sniffle and an upset stomach when her first couple of teeth came through, and Steve’s not really sure what to do with her.  She doesn’t want to be put down but she doesn’t want to be held.  She’s hot to touch but she swats away the thermometer irritably when he tries to measure how high her fever is.  She cries for a drink, then throws it up again within minutes of finishing it.  He’s given up trying to keep her clothed: she’s stripped down to her diaper, the last of her clean clothes succumbing to the inevitable early in the afternoon. 

“I don’t like it, Daddy,” she tells him, over and over.  “It’s yucky.”

Steve rocks her and soothes her and agrees.  He picks up his phone half a dozen times to text Danny but makes himself put it down again before he can send the message, because he’s Sarah’s _father_ , damnit, he can _do_ this.  Besides, Danny is working – the case Steve’s all but forgotten about – and while the irrational side of his brain would draw Danny back to the house in a heartbeat if it helped Sarah feel even a tiny bit better, the rational side (which even he has to admit isn’t operating that well right now) knows that the team needs Danny on the job more than Steve needs him at home.  So he holds his little girl close and he rocks her and he soothes her as best he can while he fights down the growing panic he refuses to admit to feeling.

 

 

It’s after nine that night when Kono finally drops Danny at Steve’s place.  They stopped by the drug store on the way home; he’s got a shopping bag filled with electrolyte popsicles, fresh juice, baby Tylenol, a new thermometer, disposable diapers and wipes.  It flaps against his legs as he stumbles out of the car and up to the front door, so tired it takes him a good few moments to remember how to work the lock.  “Get some sleep, old man,” Kono calls and he’s still threatening her with paperwork when her car disappears down the street.

The lock gives way at last and he pushes inside – then stops, astounded, because the living room is an explosion of dirty towels and stained baby clothes and discarded sippy cups.  Danny skirts around the worst of the debris (he has a great respect for his shoes, thank you very much, his shoes are leather and he’s pretty sure leather does not mix well with the orange goo splattered on the towels) and makes for the stairs.  He’s not as surprised as he should be to find one of Steve’s dirty great boots on the bottom stair and the other on the top landing.  Nor is he all that surprised to find the navy t-shirt Steve was wearing that morning draped over the rail.

He’s a little surprised when he finds another t-shirt (white) tossed on the floor outside Sarah’s room, another (black) balled up in the doorway of Steve’s room and another (dark green) just outside the bathroom.  In between he counts no less than six separate baby suits, along with at least four towels and a pile of sheets that look to have been hastily stripped from Steve’s bed.  Danny gives them a disheartened kick as he passes; he had plans for those sheets, dammit, plans involving _sleep_ , even though this thing between he and Steve is still new and uncertain and he has his own crappy bed back in his crappy little apartment.

“Steve?” he calls.  “Hey, Steve, I’ve got – ”

“Shhhh!”  

Danny follows the sound to the bathroom and manages not to trip over the balled up towel in the doorway – quite a feat, given his current levels of fatigue.  He also manages to bite back his articulation of surprise at the sight which greets him: Steve, shirtless, wearing a pair of cargo shorts normally reserved for heavy yard work, is sitting on the bathroom floor with his back against the tiled bath, Sarah flopped against his chest, face pressed into the curve of her father’s neck.  They’re surrounded by yet more towels and baby clothes and the remainder of Sarah’s sippy cups, alternately filled with water and juice. 

“Steve, what the – ”

Sarah mumbles and shifts in her sleep.

“Shhh!” Steve hisses, so softly his lips barely move.  “For the love of god, Danny, I swear, _do not wake her up_.” He rubs his hand soothingly down Sarah’s back; the baby settles back against him with a shuddering sigh.

Danny deposits the bag – carefully, soundlessly – on the counter and clears a bit of the debris away so he can lower himself down onto the floor beside Steve.  He ignores Steve’s glare when he reaches out to brush a hand gently over Sarah’s cheek, relieved to find that her fever is gone.  “When was she last sick?”

“I don’t know.”  Steve sounds more exhausted than Danny feels.  “An hour ago, maybe.  It’s like she just …e _xploded_.  She kept throwing up and I couldn’t keep her clean and I ran out of towels and she wouldn’t stay by herself long enough for me to clean up and there aren’t enough clothes for either of us.  Why didn’t you _tell me_ she doesn’t have enough clothes, Danny?”  His glare is equal parts desperation and confusion.

Danny, god help him, does not laugh.  He does _not_.  Even though he has to bite down – hard – on the inside of his cheeks to stop it bubbling out.

“I phoned the doctor,” Steve adds after a few moments.  “He said there wasn’t much he could do, it’s probably just a virus.  Do you think…I mean, he was right, yeah?  It can’t be anything more serious?”

Danny nods.  “Yeah, he’s right.  Her fever’s down; it if were anything serious, she’d be burning up.”

Steve nods too then kisses the top of Sarah’s dark little head, relief radiating from that small, simple gesture.  And Danny gets it, because he remembers the first time Grace was sick like this, how hard it was to watch his little girl throw up over and over and be helpless to stop it.  Helplessness does not sit easily or comfortably with Steve – not generally, and particularly not where his girl is concerned.

Sarah murmurs something indistinct in her sleep.  Steve’s hand is up in an instant, resuming the familiar path up and down the baby’s back.  Danny’s heart tightens in his chest when he sees Sarah’s small hand wander across her father’s chest til it’s resting over Steve’s heart.  It’s a gesture she’s had since the earliest days of her infancy, something she does instinctively when she’s lax and peaceful in his arms. 

Carefully – because he’s not an idiot and he has no desire to incur Steve’s wrath by waking Sarah – Danny manages to get an arm across Steve’s shoulders.  “You did well today, babe.”

“I know,” Danny says firmly.  Some of the tension flows out of Steve’s body and he allows himself to lean into Danny a little.  They sit there in silence for a while; Danny’s about to drift into a deeper doze when he feels the soft press of Steve’s lips on the underside of his jaw. “Thank you.”

“For what?” Danny’s not really awake enough to process the comment.

“For this.”  Steve’s gesture encompasses the debris in the room, the bag on the countertop, himself and the baby.  “For everything.”

Danny’s arm tightens momentarily around Steve’s shoulder.  “There’s nowhere in the world I’d rather be,” he says, and means it.

Steve laughs soundlessly.  “Good.  Because we’re not moving til she wakes up.”

Danny’s so tired he aches in places he isn’t normally aware of having.  He’s also far too old to spend the night on a bathroom floor; if he’s aching now, he won’t be able to move tomorrow.  But he draws Steve in a little closer anyway, feels the sag of Steve’s body against his as the last of the tension drains away.  “Duly noted.”

They sleep.

 

 


End file.
